*If I was feeling really edgy and sophisticated this morning, I’d launch into an abstruse, dense, meandering argument that “science fiction” no longer has to “lead” to anything “factual” — that, by abandoning a print ghetto in order to participate in a network-centric “ontography,” science fiction is losing its analog silo, dissolving into a different weltanschauung where probes, hypotheses and design fictions are becoming platforms for the construction of everyday life. And this article is more or less telling us how that works in certain real life industries, nowadays.

*I’m not gonna say such a thing as yet — but I’m getting to a vantage point where I, in fact, CAN say that, and probably mean it — maybe even prove it. I’m not there yet, but I can smell it on the wind.

*Sorta like a certain, rather cheesy, location-based, heads-up display, that announces itself with awesome concept videos that aren’t entirely supported by the software and hardware that the sponsoring company actually has on hand.

*Speaking of science fiction and augmented reality’s “path,” I’ll be going to Augmented Reality Event soon — and I’ll be showing up there with rather a lot on my mind.

“The frauds and the “Aha!”s have something very important in common: They play to emotional, even primal, desires. Once exposed to new concepts for future technologies, they quickly become things we not only want, but we anticipate exactly how we’d use them, and how often.

“So where does Google Glass fit in on this spectrum of possibilities? There was a predictable range of reactions when Google pulled the veil off its R&D baby on Apr. 4. I’d put them into two broad categories: people who embrace the beautifully improbable, and party poopers.

“Maybe that’s too harsh. But there is a bit of head/heart divide here.

“Testing the Proof-of-Concept

“My Wired colleague Roberto Baldwin had no trouble finding skeptics…” (((The louder the skeptics, the better; the dogs bark loudest when the caravan’s actually moving. As opposed to the caravan boozing it up around the campfire and saying “hey wow imagine if we had jetpacks for Samarkand.” Skeptics rarely get excited by that stuff, because they correctly perceive that there’s very little at stake.)))